The Wisdom of Hypatia: Ancient Spiritual Practices for a More Meaningful Life (31 page)

Our teacher continues, “The Ideas in the Cosmic Mind emanate, form, and inform

souls in the Cosmic Soul, which in turn animate and govern individual bodies in the

Cosmic Body. Thus each living thing is in a lineage, descending through the Cosmic

Soul from a Being in the Cosmic Mind.

“There are souls other than those governing plants and animals (including hu-

mans). As a class they are called
daimons
, by which I mean living beings lower than the gods and in some way less corporeal than ordinary plants and animals. Some of them

have subtle or airy bodies, and some philosophers believe they dwell in the air. Others have no body at all, and are in that sense disembodied souls.

“Of especial importance for Platonic spiritual practices are those daimons in the

lineage of specific gods, that is, the daimons descended from the gods. (Less anthropomorphically, these daimons are the images in space and time of particular divine

Beings.) Since the gods are impassive and eternal (outside of time), they have little direct interaction with individual people. However, each god’s attendant daimons,

which are images and emanations of that god, are in time and in the Cosmic Soul,

which governs processes in the material world. Therefore the daimons are not impas-

sive, and since they act in time and space, they can be more involved with individual humans. They are the ones that hear prayers and communicate with people. Therefore, the daimons act in effect as ministers and messengers of the gods.” (If daimons sound like angels, they should, for
angelos
—Greek for messenger—was one of ranks of daimons, according to some Platonists.)

the macrocosm 155

Gods, angels, and daimons! How primitive! How superstitious! You may wonder how the

philosophers who laid the foundations of Western philosophy, logic, mathematics, and science, and who posed questions and proffered solutions that still engage us, could have entertained seriously such apparently primitive ideas. Eurocentric scholars of the past talk-ed about “Orientalism” and “Eastern irrationality” infecting a supposedly purely rational Greek philosophical tradition. We now know that these scholarly opinions were prejudiced over-simplifications. On the contrary, contemporary analytical psychology has found that the ancient concept of daimons is an effective way of understanding and dealing with complexes and other psychological phenomena, as I will explain in more detail in later chapters. As Epicurus said, “Empty are the words of the philosopher who has cured no one’s soul,”212 and Neoplatonic philosophers were interested in practical psychospiritual results, for which these concepts are important.

The Inexpressible One

Before commencing the culmination of her lecture, Hypatia pauses a moment in

silent contemplation. “I turn now to the highest level of the macrocosm,
The Inexpressible One
. Unity is necessary for anything to be what it is, and therefore Unity is prior to all Being. (I mean prior in a logical sense, not prior in time.) Unity is obviously essential for organisms, but also for nonliving things, insofar as they are
things
. However, unity is even essential for groups of things, for a colony, army, team, or flock, for example, would not be what it is without being unified in some way.
The One
refers to this principle of unity, the ultimate and absolute ground of Being.

“My dear student Synesius braved an earthquake to return to us from his stay in

Constantinople, and we are happy to have him back in Alexandria; he is sitting here in the first row.” Hypatia gestures in his direction, and he bows his head modestly. “Synesius has written words praising The One in a hymn that he composed here last year.

Please recite it for us.”

Synesius rises, turns to face the audience, and chants:

Fount of all founts, of all beginnings first,

O Root, whence every living root hath burst;

Unit of Unities, of Numbers all

The Source, the Mind that hast all ever known,

Both what has been, and what is yet to be;

156 the macrocosm

One before all; of all the Sum alone;

Seed of all things; the Root and highest Branch. 213

“Thank you,” Hypatia says as he returns to his seat. “Despite Synesius’ eloquent

words, we must be careful to distinguish The One from the Cosmic Mind. For the Cosmic Mind, in contrast to The One, is characterized by multiplicity, for there are many Ideas, all different from each other.
To be
is to be
something
, so Unity is above the realm of Being, the Cosmic Mind, which is, in contrast, the realm of Duality, of differences between one Idea and another. The Cosmic Mind is also characterized by duality in another way, for it looks towards itself, in the sense that its constituent Thoughts are related in various ways to each other, but it also looks upwards toward The One, from which the individual Ideas and the Cosmic Mind as a whole get their unity. So in the Cosmic Mind there is a differentiation between subject and object, which is not present in The One. Let’s look at this in a little more detail. It’s subtle and difficult, so pay attention!

“In accord with the Triadic Principle, Plotinus considered there to be two aspects

of the emanation of the Cosmic Mind from The One: procession and return. The One

produces an Indefinite Duality, which is like itself (unified), but no longer simple, for it permits differentiation within itself. It is sort of the raw material for the realm of Ideas, and is therefore an
indeterminate Mind
, an indefinite mental continuum, and the highest level of the Cosmic Mind. This indeterminate Mind looks back toward The One, from which it proceeded, and, trying to impose unity on its indefiniteness, can do so only by breaking up the indeterminate continuum into determinate Ideas or Forms.

Thus, by contemplating The One, the Cosmic Mind
informs
itself. That is, it copies the unity and simplicity of The One into the many Ideas that are images of The One, but

determined or defined in different ways. Therefore, each Idea is a different Thought about The One. In effect, the
object
of all the Thoughts is the same, but from different
subjective
perspectives. Since each of the Beings, as Minds, are images or projections of the same Whole, each Mind is its own cosmos, but they all are perspectives on one common Cosmos.”

Permit me to interrupt Hypatia to explain these ideas in different terms. The One is an abstract notion of unity and stability, but it raises the question of how there can be multiplicity in the World Mind, which is an image of The One. Think of The One as a perfectly sharp mathematical point; it is absolutely definite and unified in itself. Now imagine de-focusing the point so it spreads into an ever-widening field of blackness. It is still unified the macrocosm 157

(because it’s all the same), but it provides a continuous field of different possibilities (i.e., different locations), but they are undifferentiated and indeterminate, as in pitch darkness.

This is the Indefinite Duality (because it
permits
differences but doesn’t
define
them). However, in this infinite field of possibility there is space to make definite images of The One, like stars appearing in the night sky; these are the Ideas or Beings. Thus the unlimited potential of Indefinite Duality creates definite Beings by copying The One. For this reason, some Platonists understood The One to have two complementary aspects, the
Monad
(another word for “one”)—a principle of unity—and the
Indefinite Dyad
(i.e., duality)—a principle of separation. Since together they create the Beings, which include the gods, they can be identified with the father and the mother of the other gods, that is, with God and Goddess. The father gives them their form, the mother gives them individual existence.

However, we must beware of thinking of abstract principles anthropomorphically.

If these ideas seem a little abstract, let’s try extending our CD analogy. Remember that the videogame CD is analogous to the World Mind with its timeless structures of interrelated Forms and Ideas: the videogame’s reality. The blank CD, before the game has been burned onto it, corresponds to the unlimited potential of the Indeterminate Mind, which can hold different systems of Ideas, different realities. Each reality, however, is represented on the CD by a pattern of ones and zeroes, and as you may know, each “one” is a small hole in the metal layer of the CD blasted by the intense laser light of the CD writer. Thus, the ones that, through their arrangement, constitute the videogame’s reality are all images of The One of the laser light.

Like all analogies, this one is imperfect, since it suggests that The One creates the World Mind sequentially in time, like writing a CD, whereas the emanation of the World Mind from The One is timeless. Nevertheless, I hope it makes these esoteric ideas a little clearer. Let’s get back to Hypatia.

“Since The One is above Being, above what
is
or
is not
, it cannot have any definite being or have any specific properties ascribed to it. It cannot even be said to exist or not to exist, for Existence is an Idea at the level of Being.”

“How then can we think or talk about It?” Hierocles asks.

“Ultimately, we cannot, at least not in any precise way. Therefore it is called Inexpressible or Ineffable. Synesius puts it well in another hymn, which he sent to me:

Father unknown, transcending thought,

Unspeakable, no tongue can sing

158 the macrocosm

Thee, Mind of minds, Thee, Soul of souls,

Thee, Source whence natures all must spring.214

“Of course, to call The One “Father” or any of these other things is misleading.”

“Then how can we learn anything about it?” Hierocles asks.

“Ultimately The Inexpressible One can be grasped only through a process of union,

which is a practice for my more advanced students.” Some of her private students

nudge each other and exchange smiles, swelling a little with pride. Their teacher continues, “Nevertheless, we attach attributes and names to The One (including ‘The One’) as a way of helping the mind to grasp it. Plotinus often adds ‘so to speak’ to his descriptions of The One as a reminder that they are just crutches to help us comprehend it.

With this caution in mind, I will mention a few attributes that help lead us to The One.

“The One is
infinite
—so to speak—because the setting of bounds or limits is characteristic of duality, and The One is prior to duality. That is, a bound separates one thing from another, even if the other thing is nothing, and so if there is a limit there must be at least two things. The One is also
infinite in power
, in the sense that it is the cause of everything, of all the eternal Ideas or Forms, and through them of all the

natural process in the Cosmic Soul, and by means of them, of all the coming to be and passing away in the material world. It is the productive power behind the universe.

“The One is called The Good for the following reason. A good may be defined as

anything something else seeks in order to preserve its existence and its being, that is to say, its unity. This applies even to inanimate things, such as fires and hurricanes, for which fuel and warmth are ‘good’. Without it, the fire or hurricane ceases to exist; it
is
no more. But The One, which is the ultimate cause of existence and being, cannot be in need of anything. Further, to need something implies duality—that which needs and

that which is needed—but duality is posterior to The One.

“Since The One is what everything needs, ultimately, to exist and be what it is, The One can be considered the Ultimate Good. In some sense, unity is what everything

seeks in order to exist, to
be
something. It is The Good to which everything at every level looks for its being. You should not confuse The One as Ultimate Good with the

Idea
of the Good, which resides in the Cosmic Mind and is opposed to the Idea of the Not-Good, or Evil, and so is in the realm of duality.

Petrus, a Christian student, raises his hand and asks, “Is this why we know that God is good?”

the macrocosm 159

Hypatia quickly replies, “The Good is not necessarily good in the sense of
doing
good
in some human terms, which is what someone usually means when they say

‘God is good’. The most we can say is that this thing we call The Good is what everything needs in order to be. This is part of the trap of using loaded words, such as ‘good’, which are properly applied to human actions, to the utmost ineffable metaphysical

abstractions, but let us continue down this treacherous road a little further.

“For instance, as the Ultimate Good, which all things seek and pursue, The One can

be called the Supremely Lovable, that is, that which everything loves. Since it is its own Good, it can be said to love itself, and thus—so to speak—to
be
Love; it is simultaneously Love and The Beloved. Again, The One is above the
Idea
of Love, and so it is metaphorical and ultimately inaccurate to call The One ‘Love’. But we philosophers do it.

“The Inexpressible One is also characterized—so to speak—by Beauty. It is not

Beauty Itself, for Beauty is a matter of Form, and so, as I’ve explained, the Cosmic Mind in its totality is Beauty. Nevertheless, since the Cosmic Mind is a direct emanation of The One, Plotinus calls The One ‘the Beauty that transcends all Beauty’.215 These metaphorical descriptions of The One might seem to be dangerously misleading, but Plato

showed how beauty is the basis of a spiritual practice that can lead us upward from

bodily beauty, through the beauty of the soul, to ideal Beauty, and from it toward The One, the Beauty that transcends all Beauty.216 I will conclude by reciting again from a hymn of my devoted disciple, Synesius: